trunks and thus ventilating his opinion of Germany
as a whole. He had been much the same about vul-
picides and socialists in peace-time. "It's very odd;
for Hesmon's an extraordinarily kind-hearted man,"
said Moffat, who himself regarded the War as an un-
mitigated nuisance, but didn't waste his energy abus-
ing it or anybody else. He had enough to do already,
for he found it far from easy to keep the Hunt on its
legs, and what the hounds would get to eat next year
he really didn't know. He added that "the Missus's
dachshunds only just escaped being interned as enemy
aliens".
Sport in Sussex was only a makeshift exhilaration,
and early in November I went to London for a final
Medical Board. At the Gaxton Hall in Westminster I
spent a few minutes gazing funereally round an empty
waiting-room. Above the fireplace (there was no fire)
hung a neatly-framed notice for the benefit of all
whom it might concern. It stated the scale of prices
for artificial limbs, with instructions as to how officers
could obtain them free of cost. The room contained
no other ornament. While I was adjusting my mind
to what a journalist might have called "the grim
humour'3 of this footnote to Army life, a Girl Guide
stepped in to say that Colonel Crossbones (or what-
ever his cognomen was) would see me now. A few
formalities "put paid to" my period of freedom, and I
pretended to be feeling pleased as I walked away from
Westminster, though wondering whether the poli-
ticians had any expectations that hostilities would be
concluded by Christmas, and eyeing the Admiralty
with a notion that it must be rather nice to be in the
Navy.
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